Thursday, March 31, 2016

Bruce ut on a second game of Soldiers of God, basically reversing the forces so the Christians attacked.

The left was a ranged combat event with horse archers facing off against bow and crossbow. This was stagnant for a long time and then went super badly for me late in the game... .

I attacked over on the right, losing an infantry unit but playing some event cards to my advantage.

In the middle, I moved forward with the good troops screened by a meat-shield of peasants. At this point, I was away ahead on army morale and hoped to turn the flank on the right and bag the town.

Then Bruce's annoying attacks on my left caused a bunch of units to fold up and suddenly it was a tie game with one turn left! What?! In the end, Bruce managed to sack one of my generals and I couldn't seal the deal on right fast enough. A good, close game, though.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

As a bit of a diversion, I have been building a few 1/76-scale models that Terry has cleaned out of his basement. This was an old Matchbox Chaffee; I don't think I have ever built one of these.

Went together well (Matchbox made nice kits including the best vinyl tread design) but the decals cracked so I subbed in some extras I had. I also used the sandbags from the diorama to add some interest to the front end. Not sure why there is glare as I dull coated it.

Up next: No club on Tuesday so maybe a game with Bruce? And I'll be getting back to do some 15mm fantasy in a bit.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

No, not them. That is just some friends playing a beer-fueled game of Pandemic on the weekend.

Soldiers of God is a new card driven set of rules for the Crusades. Bruce hosted a 15mm game on Tuesday and it was very interesting. Each turn comprises 14 alterating impulses (so seven moves each). Each impulse requires you to play a card to activate a section of the field (left-centre-right).

The interesting part is that three cards (one for each of the sections of the field) are fixed for the game. They represent your battle plan and, each turn, each section of the field will execute their predetermined move. You can influence when by playing the four cards randomly drawn each turn from your hand. But eventually your army will carry out its orders in each section (whether you want it to or not).

I chose double envelopment which means that the left and right flank charged forward each turn while the centre marched. This was, perhaps sub-optimal, but I made the choice with inly a partial grasp of the implications. My centre and right sections came into contact with Bruce's troops while the centre commander charged the town all by himself (ahem).

I eventually managed to win on the grinding battles and break Bruce's army (barely) before losing. My brave centre commander acquitted himself well (i.e., did not die) and the infidel was pushed off the field by my soldiers of God.

Overall, very neat mechanics suitable for any medieval battle. The chrome in the system is crusades specific but you could ignore that as the mechanic will work fine without it. The unalterable (except by special event card) battleplan is an interesting bit of command and control rigidity to introduce to limit the helicopter god phenomenon.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

We had 16 guys out at the club last night, which was a big turn out! I hosted Scott, Wiley and Bruce in a game of 1775: Rebellion.

I thought the Americans had the game well in hand, especially after Bruce landed in Delaware and Nova Scotia. We were all over the Imperialists!

We then pursued a southern strategy as the game dragged on and on (where are the end game cards?). The British pushed hard into New England and the Americans ran into some trouble with the dice (despite locking up the south and contesting the north).

The British got to move last on the last turn and managed to overturn a 7-3 colony advantage to win the game. Arrrrrgh!

There were a tonne of other games out.

Mini-wise, I think there was one game of Warmachine and two games of game Kings of War.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Okay, so things have been crazy at work these past few weeks and I kind of fell off of the pace gaming-wise. I'm starting back at it with the last of the mounted knights.

I picked up a few new paints (the yellow and the darker blue) and that has added some pop to these figures. The yellow is a lovely saffron colour.

I have about another 15 or 18 of the lighter mounted troops to do then the last of the medium foot and then the humans are done. I will be priming the last of the dwarves and goblins today and then getting started on them. Kevin gifted me some lovely were-bears to fill out the ranks of the monsters.

Sadly the last few knights included one final paint stick of these lancers (which are awful sculpts).

Up next: I am going to try a drop-in board-game meet-up on Tuesday at the new boardgame cafe on 124th street. Likely also more Battlelore and maybe a slight diversion into some 1/76 Matchbox WW2 (thanks Terry!).